Because, like the weather

Because, like the weather it colours this place

you do not notice. Maybe, you’ll sense

in the way something is put, something avoided,

neatly, because though they’re friendly enough,

no matter how long you have been among them

you can’t be trusted to understand. How could you?

    So, I tell this as an anecdote.

They’d been seeing it for some time,

even caught sight of it padding by the back door,

its stink down by the chook pens,

but now it’s here, in a cage they’d set

with one of the lambs it has killed.

There is panic in the froth of saliva.

Eyes engorged with brilliance.

    Their dogs, the fox.

They bay and snap at the cage.

It is sweat-matted and concentrates its stare

on its newest threat, swivels and snarls,

and snarls and is lost in the mash of its fate.

    One by one

a new dog is introduced

until terror extinguishes with a yelp.

The cage, silent as the hills,

    as all witness is.

“The best way to blood pups,” he says.

Trusting me with that much.

Russell Erwin